So lets see if this will work. I am going to teach myself the basics of Java programming and not be bored to death at the same time.
A few things:
Why do this? Why learn how to write a computer program ?
Java is an interesting language. When you write an application you generally do it in a language - a way to tell the computer what you want it to do. Most people have a pretty nebulous idea of what this means which is sad since computers have gotten a lot faster but they're not much smarter. I think we're fighting the extreme laws of physics on one end* and the speed of Facebook posting, beer drinking people learning stuff on the other.
Think of it this way - 50 years ago if I figured out how to do perform a task better than before - even a itty bitty bit better - than someone else who cares? Now I can check it into a repository and have it benefit anyone else who does the same task. This has a massive cumulative effect, think how much has changed in finance since we started actually using money. Sound stupid but people have been able to speak for around 40 thousand years, using a more or less consistently valued abstract for representing worth is a relatively new idea.
Neil Stevenson wrote a really interesting quasihistorical novel about the 1700's when the global financial system went through an massive change and a lot of interesting people could have plausible been involved (I have no idea to the veracity of anything in the novels, the goal was to convey an idea and tell a story, not represent history except in a deeper sense). There is also a lot of sciencey stuff. I flunked Calculus 242 at least twice. The concepts where cool and interesting. The work to reach the actual answers made sure I never did any of the homework. At least I knew I was failing and could skip the final. Stay with me.
I think that we are still seeing the impact of these things build. Information now is replicable, relatively cheap to transmit and can be managed. Think of a typical large organization, public or private.The finance department specializes in information focused on measuring money and making predictions about what will be the most profitable actions for the organization as a whole to take. Marketing specializes in getting information in and out of the company - advertising, customer feedback, product identification. Engineering product creation & manufacture. Operations providing getting the mix together to actually get the stuff to turn from an input to an output. Customer service is there to let the customer push information to your organization, hopefully keeping them around and giving you the ideal source of ideas** etc. etc. I'm not pretending this is all there is to those portions of the organization but they do ALL have areas shared in common. Few companies have an electrician for each department, a secretary for every employee so roles in a company are in part due to scale. If you're a mom and pop bakery it's not cost effective to start a data warehouse on your work.
Not yet. Like I said, hardware is literally pushing the limits of our knowledge of physics. It's fast, so fast people don't grasp the concept. My phone is more powerful than the laptop I got when I came to this company, my midrange standard Dell workstation's CPU is more powerful than the one in the 50,000$ minicomputer.* A 100 dollar SSD hard drive is faster than a 30,000 dollar storage array of 5 years ago. The amount of crap we can dump on a computer and still get it to sift out a useful item is amazing and just gets better.
Being doing that sifting is the part of programming that interests me.
*The limit on most processors is how fast they can go before cooking themselves. Thinner wires produce less heat. The die of a CPU is measured in nanometers. That's generally beyond the realm of physical things - wavelengths of light and stuff. Some geeks may find this cool.
**One of the books I've read recently is a collection Peter Drucker's essays. I don't agree with all of his opinions but he brings some fantastic concepts to the table. One of the ideas he talks about is making your customer have more money is rarely a bad thing.
*** That we pay for more money annually than replacing it with new hardware would cost total, ditto for the support costs. It's a difficult situation since it really is vital that the system be up and stable but running something in the gigabyte range is not the same thing as it was 10 or even 5 years ago. That's especially true if it's extremely read heavy (like the internet or a data warehouse). It's easier to send than receive, thats why television was around before the internet but the playing field is getting another magnitude of leveled. Will it go to porn, Nigerian bankers and advertisements written to piss off ADD people? Or is the ability to codify thought a way for all of us to at least contribute a tiny bit if we have the ability and desire.
A few things:
Why do this? Why learn how to write a computer program ?
Java is an interesting language. When you write an application you generally do it in a language - a way to tell the computer what you want it to do. Most people have a pretty nebulous idea of what this means which is sad since computers have gotten a lot faster but they're not much smarter. I think we're fighting the extreme laws of physics on one end* and the speed of Facebook posting, beer drinking people learning stuff on the other.
Think of it this way - 50 years ago if I figured out how to do perform a task better than before - even a itty bitty bit better - than someone else who cares? Now I can check it into a repository and have it benefit anyone else who does the same task. This has a massive cumulative effect, think how much has changed in finance since we started actually using money. Sound stupid but people have been able to speak for around 40 thousand years, using a more or less consistently valued abstract for representing worth is a relatively new idea.
Neil Stevenson wrote a really interesting quasihistorical novel about the 1700's when the global financial system went through an massive change and a lot of interesting people could have plausible been involved (I have no idea to the veracity of anything in the novels, the goal was to convey an idea and tell a story, not represent history except in a deeper sense). There is also a lot of sciencey stuff. I flunked Calculus 242 at least twice. The concepts where cool and interesting. The work to reach the actual answers made sure I never did any of the homework. At least I knew I was failing and could skip the final. Stay with me.
I think that we are still seeing the impact of these things build. Information now is replicable, relatively cheap to transmit and can be managed. Think of a typical large organization, public or private.The finance department specializes in information focused on measuring money and making predictions about what will be the most profitable actions for the organization as a whole to take. Marketing specializes in getting information in and out of the company - advertising, customer feedback, product identification. Engineering product creation & manufacture. Operations providing getting the mix together to actually get the stuff to turn from an input to an output. Customer service is there to let the customer push information to your organization, hopefully keeping them around and giving you the ideal source of ideas** etc. etc. I'm not pretending this is all there is to those portions of the organization but they do ALL have areas shared in common. Few companies have an electrician for each department, a secretary for every employee so roles in a company are in part due to scale. If you're a mom and pop bakery it's not cost effective to start a data warehouse on your work.
Not yet. Like I said, hardware is literally pushing the limits of our knowledge of physics. It's fast, so fast people don't grasp the concept. My phone is more powerful than the laptop I got when I came to this company, my midrange standard Dell workstation's CPU is more powerful than the one in the 50,000$ minicomputer.* A 100 dollar SSD hard drive is faster than a 30,000 dollar storage array of 5 years ago. The amount of crap we can dump on a computer and still get it to sift out a useful item is amazing and just gets better.
Being doing that sifting is the part of programming that interests me.
*The limit on most processors is how fast they can go before cooking themselves. Thinner wires produce less heat. The die of a CPU is measured in nanometers. That's generally beyond the realm of physical things - wavelengths of light and stuff. Some geeks may find this cool.
**One of the books I've read recently is a collection Peter Drucker's essays. I don't agree with all of his opinions but he brings some fantastic concepts to the table. One of the ideas he talks about is making your customer have more money is rarely a bad thing.
*** That we pay for more money annually than replacing it with new hardware would cost total, ditto for the support costs. It's a difficult situation since it really is vital that the system be up and stable but running something in the gigabyte range is not the same thing as it was 10 or even 5 years ago. That's especially true if it's extremely read heavy (like the internet or a data warehouse). It's easier to send than receive, thats why television was around before the internet but the playing field is getting another magnitude of leveled. Will it go to porn, Nigerian bankers and advertisements written to piss off ADD people? Or is the ability to codify thought a way for all of us to at least contribute a tiny bit if we have the ability and desire.
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